Araz tensed, his body vibrating with the need for action.
Commotion broke out across the camp, people ducking out from their tents as campfires flickered and bent, fighting this arctic chill.
The wind dropped suddenly, taking the chill with it, but a mist rose at the edge of camp.
“What’s happening?” Joe asked everyone and no one in particular. “Is this Mizikiel? Is this an unraveling?”
“No…” Araz stood taller. “This isn’t an unraveling. It’s an arrival.” He grinned, his body relaxing.
What was he grinning at? I peered into the mist as it billowed and rose. What was he seeing?
Chaya let out a gasp, and Malina bit back a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob, and something inside my chest expanded.
No…Could it be…I broke away from the group, allowing my feet to carry me toward the mist, my pulse racing as it thinned.
Please…please…
The mist parted, and a figure stepped out. Taller than I remembered. Broader too. The lines of his face sharper. The planes harder. But there was no mistaking who he was.
“Pashim!”
I ran toward him, and his austere face broke into a grin. He caught me to him, crushing me into a hug that melted the last of the icy dread that had formed in my belly.
“You’re here.”
“Yes, Leela. I’m here. And I brought an army.” Figures materialized around me. Powerfully built, shadowy, spectral forms with glowing white eyes. Warriors from Myrtu Valley. “You prepare for battle against the primordial evil, and we will go with you. Where is he? Where are his troops?”
He’d done it. Pashim had brought an army of dead to us. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was no use. That the unraveling made it impossible to fight Mizikiel.
Joe, however, had no such qualms. “It’s no use,” he said behind us. “The bastard escaped into his realm, and there’s a failsafe to unravel anyone who gets within a hundred meters of the mountain where the doorway to his world is hidden.”
A tall, stocky figure stepped abreast of Pashim and me, as tall as Pashim and with a look about him that was familiar.
“You cannot unravel that which is already dead,” he said. “We can carry a small number of the living within the protection of our mist.” His gaze fell to me.
Hope flared in my chest. I looked back at Araz to see my sentiments echoed on his face.
We had a way past the failsafe.
A way into the mountain.
No one had to die.
No one had to risk their lives today.
No one except me. And I could live with that.
Chapter 39
FACE-TO-FACE. EYE TO EYE.
Hope shone from the faces around the camp. True hope of stopping death. The real possibility of survival. Our last hurrah had become our final true stand.
The specters’ mist carrying me to the mountain removed our main obstacle. The rest would be up to me. Yes, Araz and Blue would be with me once I stepped into Mizikiel’s domain, but I’d have to strike the killing blow. I’d have to destroy Chandra’s vessel and the last of his essence to hopefully annihilate Mizikiel.
Even then, we might fail. He might survive.
I might not be the Vajra.
